


bruised cheeks and bruised hearts

by oceanterminal



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 17:43:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11994795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceanterminal/pseuds/oceanterminal
Summary: Hawke and Isabela get into a fistfight. Merrill is the one to bridge the gap.





	bruised cheeks and bruised hearts

It always happens like this – an argument, a fist to the face, and she always loses when it gets physical.

Isabela runs off to find some secluded windowsill in Lowtown to sit on – somewhere Hawke wouldn’t look (somewhere Merrill would). She rubs her cheek – there’s blood in her mouth and it probably hurts more than her heart does but still. She hangs her body over the edge, she could fall if she weren’t herself – could fall if she let herself.

Just a little bit of risk to make her feel in control.

Merrill finds her not soon after, clambers her way up too. It takes her a while; she keeps sliding down the pole Isabella shimmied up just to get up here but nobody can match Merrill’s determination. She sits up with her, fusses over her. Isabela keeps her arms at bay but Merrill reaches out, cups her face and worries her bruises. It hurts, but it doesn’t really.

Merrill babbles, stammers about Hawke and how worried she was and it’s slower than normal – Isabela can see where her eyes went most but her voice doesn’t shake. She almost slips, once – Isabela catches her with a hastily thrust out hand, decides they should get down before Merrill falls or Isabela does trying to stop her.

They hold hands on the way home – anyone who looked would have thought it was Isabela leading her airy-headed friend back to the Alienage like a lost child but no – Merrill lags behind but is the one pulling her ahead, leading Isabela by the hand.

(Isabela has always been the child and it’s taken a thousand mugs of shitty beer and nights with ugly men and beautiful women to forget it. She remembers neither.)

Hawke’s estate is left unlocked – a welcome mat as big as Hawke could ever offer. She’s in front of the fireplace, sitting on the couch alone. Bandaging her fist, too – it connected with Isabela’s cheek in a bad way. (Isabela won, but none of them really did.)

(She’s bandaging it all wrong, too.)

Merrill runs over first, rubs the Mabari’s head before sitting with Hawke, watching. Hawke looks back over at the door, wounded and still angry and lonely, and Isabela falters, walks back over to Hawke and mumbles something about Hawke not knowing shit about how to bandage her wounds properly, unwraps loose cloth and reties it tighter, better.

Hawke winces as she pulls it tight and there’s a sorry, and one back. It’s enough.

She leans back against the couch – the Mabari comes over and invites himself into the piles, and Merrill begs and Isabella scoots herself up onto the couch, finds herself in between Hawke and Merrill and _oh_.

Affection takes time to come but Merrill starts snuggled up against her, Isabela’s fingers intertwined with hers, thumb running the back of Merrill’s hand. Hawke takes her injured hand to caress Isabela’s cheek – the cloth is rough but Hawke’s hand isn’t (not like before), and all this is far too intimate for her, really, but she’s sinking into it and into them far too easily and _oh_.

Isabela’s never been surrounded by love before, always something wet or white that she pretended was love at first and later sicked up in an alleyway in regret and booze.

But there’s no booze here – just boobs (heh), just a fireplace and a couch and two people she trusts probably a little too much, and a dog.

She hasn’t felt this relaxed in a long, long time.

(Is it love? Maybe not. Isabel doesn’t want to ruin it and say it, not yet, so she lets herself dreams, sinks into Hawke and Merrill like they’ll keep her safe.)

(And they do, all the time. Safety has never felt so much like a home.)

(Maybe this _is_ home.)


End file.
